Acts of Charity Can Make You a More Attractive Dating Prospect, Study Suggests

There are a number of benefits that come from doing charitable acts, but what if being charitable actually made you sexier?

That’s the thinking behind new research out of England, where an experiment was conducted involving 35 men and 32 women.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, sought to better understand how being altruistic makes us more sexually desirable.

The men and women in the study were each asked to rate the attractiveness of differing qualities among members of the opposite sex. The same qualities were gauged in terms of a long-term partner or a potential one-night stand.

While both genders did find more altruistic types more attractive, women responded to them both in terms of a lasting relationship and something more immediate. For men, the response was more pronounced in regards to a potential long-term mate.

“Women responded to altruistic types for

a relationship or a one-night stand.”

Researchers are focusing on how natural selection tends to favor certain behaviors, including investing time and efforts toward helping others.

According to the study, these acts may subconsciously signal that a partner has good genes and will better protect their children.

“We now know that ‘altruistic’ helping can actually increase evolutionary fitness in various ways – people might preferentially help their relatives, with whom they share genes, or they might target their helping toward others who are likely to reciprocate in the future,” said Dr. Freya Harrison, of the University of Nottingham’s Life Sciences Center for Biomolecular Sciences.

From: counselhealth.com.